


Sleepless Psalms

by orphan_account



Series: The Scifi AU Nobody Asked For [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Mild Gore, No Magic AU, SCIFI AU, a vague wondering as to why I haven't been writing piero this entire time, autistic piero, he's fun, mute corvo, synth outsider, trans outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 06:51:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8435743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sometimes, there are things better left unknown. He's not sure whether or not this is one of them.





	

The streets stink of stale ale and cigar ashes.

A breeze blows in from the river, surprisingly refreshing, salt tang a comforting lullaby to those who will bed down at the Hound Pits, or any other of the sundry and assorted buildings in the area. Corvo has no such plans, but it doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate the reprieve up on the makeshift beam to Piero’s workshop.

The makeshift beam is silent beneath his feet. However rickety it may look, Piero is no slouch when it comes to construction.

He edges the building and moves in slowly, dropping in through the large window that he knows has been left unlatched for him. Well, maybe not just for him. He doesn’t know who else the inventor expects to come creeping through the upper levels, though, and thinks with some concern that maybe he should talk to him about the wisdom of such an invitation.

“If someone wants to get into my shop, I don’t think a lock is going to stop them,” Piero says, and Corvo would jump halfway out of his skin if he weren’t so practiced at hiding his shock. The scientist is sitting on his bed, warming by his stove as he pours over complicated looking schematics and texts in a language that looks too intentional to be fake, but that Corvo can’t quite believe is real, either. “After all, there’s no shortage of bricks in this city. Or rocks from the banks. As we have discussed many times, I wouldn’t be all that difficult to take out after that. I do have shutters, but then you’d have to use the door, and –“

He cuts himself off, glancing up at Corvo with an apologetic smile. “I’m rambling. Apologies. What brings you in tonight?”

The dart gun shines in the candlelight. Piero must be suffering from one of his migraines, since he normally has the place lit brighter than the sun itself, and so Corvo makes certain not to be too much of a presence, which he already knows is overwhelming.

‘Bad night?’ he signs after Piero takes the gun. He doesn’t have to say much more, the inventor is already zeroed in on the scope. Broken technology has no hope of hiding from the vision enhancement he’s installed into his glasses.

“You could say that. I suppose it’s not all bad, I should be thankful. The Outsider doesn’t have to share his database with me.” He unfolds himself from the bed and starts to walk down the stairs, so Corvo follows, a silent companion. He’s known Piero too long to think the other is ungrateful for company.

‘Couldn’t you gather it yourself?’ he asks, hands moving only when Piero’s flickering glances are spared in his direction. The scientist smiles, swipes a blistered hand through his gingery hair.

“It’s not that simple. He’s – He’s an actual synth, you know? The whole kit and caboodle. I only have a backup driver, so naturally his capacity is more. And besides, he can run algorithms I can’t. He’s not one of those simple models that exists as a storage unit, he’s. He can really think, he can run every single remote possibility for a situation in under a second, and select the most successful or likely route in the next and have it all laid out –“ He stops himself again, flinching.

Corvo has never chastened him for running on, but he’s certainly heard his fair share of people berating Piero for such things. When no rebuke comes, he adds, more softly: “It’s just too much for my processor, that’s all. It takes a long time to run through, and it overheats, but. The information is just too good to let go. And I couldn’t ask for a more considerate source. He only passes on the things he knows would interest me. It’s all very intimate.”

Corvo raises an eyebrow, and the scientist starts in a way that makes him crack a lopsided grin. Piero is already flapping his hands, flustered as he tries to bat away the insinuation in Corvo’s expression.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Piero says, fingers fiddling with his cuffs. He’s rubbed them worn already, but doesn’t seem to care he’s rubbing them further. “I just… He’s considerate. And I see things that maybe he doesn’t intend, the pathing gets all – I know some of what he thinks. I know how he looks at you.”

‘How he looks at me?’ Corvo signs, and Piero grins at the spot on the wall beside his shoulder.

“Yes, well – flashes of what he sees, and everything attached to them. When he looks at you, I’ve seen… Flowers, blood. He had an interesting dream, well, a couple, really. But I think the one with the heart is probably the one that happens most.”

Flowers and blood, he thinks. And hearts? The confusion must show on his face, but Piero shakes his head and turns back to fiddle with the sauntering iron, twisting the intensity of the flame up and down.

“I can’t – I wouldn’t do any of it justice, Corvo. Maybe it’s wrong, but. I did think about downloading some of it – I have downloaded some of it.” He flushes. “There isn’t enough room on the drive, you see, so I couldn’t have kept it all on there. I hadn’t thought of what to do with it, I didn’t want it getting into the wrong hands in case they figured out his encryption, but. I think if anyone has the right to it, maybe that’s you?”

Piero twists up the flame to its highest and stares at the tiny tongue of white that peeps out of the nozzle. He’s waiting, Corvo knows, for acceptance; for an allowance, or a reassurance. Something to tell him that he’s done right to confide his transgressions. His eyes flicker between Corvo and the flame.

Corvo doesn’t know if he’s qualified to talk about transgressions or confidence at all.

‘I’ll take it, then,’ he signs, shrugging his shoulders. Piero beams before he sets the sauntering iron down. He rummages through piles of disk, little silverfish gleaming in the dim lighting of his workshop. When he presses it into Corvo’s hand, the drive is as innocuous as anything.

Well. It’s not as if it will be any less safe on the body of a ghost.

“I’ll have your gun ready in a few hours. I think the third floor room is still vacant? You could take one of my blankets, I won’t be needing it tonight,” Piero offers, and then turns to his work. The look that means he’s already blocked out the rest of the world crosses his face, and Corvo makes a note to himself to try and get the poor fool some sedatives the next time he’s making a trip to one of the Outsider’s hideaways.

The crossing back to the Hound Pits is just about as quiet as his entry. He has no need to sneak in here, but he’s also wary; old habits die hard, and Corvo has never much been in the habit of letting all persons know his whereabouts at all times.

He’s surprised to find that it’s been made up in any case; he hasn’t been there for a solid week and a half, but the bedclothes aren’t dusty and the pillows are plumped up. The candles haven’t even guttered to darkness yet, and he finds himself momentarily touched by it.

Then, he bolts both doors.

The question of what to do after that should be simple; he’s exhausted, has been for a few nights now, running the city from the flooded district to the Hound Pits, assuring Emily’s safety and comfort before running off again. But for some reason, sleep eludes him now, and he tosses and turns and shifts and sighs before he finally gives in to pacing for a while.

The disk feels heavy in his pocket, burns between his fingers. The mask has a reader, he thinks, and soon enough, he starts to justify the intrusion. If it was given, even unintentionally, to Piero, and Piero had decided that Corvo had more of a justifiable right to it, then who was he to argue? Sure, Piero missed out on a lot of social cues, but he was a decent enough person.

Corvo turns it over in his hand while he smokes down a cigarette, and then another, little favours tucked into his shirtfront after his nights with the Outsider. They’re tipped with rose petals, flavoured with rose syrup, and all he can taste through them is the Outsider’s tongue on his own.

He licks his lips, and fits the disk into the reader on his mask.

Admittedly, it’s a strange sight, at first. Corvo has no cybernetic enhancements beyond his equipment, none of the installed drivers or devices to make life easier. So he’s never seen the lightning quick pathing that thoughts take, one file after the next being opened, explored, like running program after program.

Suddenly, Piero’s speech patterns seem a lot more relatable. Corvo feels like he’s stuttering already, and he can’t even speak. He moves to the bed to lay down, spinning with it all, and when he sees himself, he draws in a sharp breath.

It’s always odd to find out what you look like, he thinks, but there’s something so different in this, especially. He sees his face through his mask, automatically, sees the outline of his naked body. The Outsider reaches out to touch him and reality fragments; he watches himself kiss and bite and yell and glower and recoil all at once, options he had no idea existed. But mostly he just stands there, looking, and Corvo finds his own gaze superimposed beneath the mask’s features.

Soon enough, it’s not. He knows this memory, a few nights back – he knows because he remembers the arching spray of red on his coat, the tremor in his hands. He remembers taking the pills, but he witnesses this memory in new fashions and facets.

The Outsider thinks of roses when he sees blood, the Outsider wants to lay him in a bed of roses and drown him there in their scent. He sees the dream, the thought; he sees the fantasy of violets and orchids blooming from the bruises on his body where the Outsider touches, where he bites.

He tells himself that he’s not getting aroused by it, and fails spectacularly.

After all, there he is, being touched, a masturbation of the ego if he ever had one. His body is so ruined, so different from how he wants it to be, but it’s transformed by another’s vision. He can feel the way the Outsider excites himself when his fingers smooth over the scar on his sternum, imagining opening it up himself.

Hearts, no – his heart. The Outsider thinks of pulling his heart out, makes a reality where he does, where Corvo gasps and tries to scream as he takes a big, bloody mouthful of it, where it’s replaced by something metallic and lifeless.

Where Corvo is more like the Outsider.

Instead, his fingers smooth over the mark made during torture, do not linger on the actuality, though they sense probability; Corvo’s lungs were touched, his ribs were broken, but his heart was undisturbed under torture.

He can’t help but touch his lips as he watches the Outsider kiss them, can’t help the way his hips twist and his thighs rub together as he watches himself be moved against. He’d been up against a wall that time, he’d been half horrified somebody would come and find them, fucking in a back alleyway.

He sees now that was a very real possibility, that the Outsider had calculated that possibility. That it excited him as much as it had Corvo, and that his enthusiasm had been very, very real.

“Corvo-“ he hears, the mask amplifying the sound, and he rips it off so quickly that he’s afraid he may have broken it. Throwing it across the room probably didn’t help.

But he’s shaken, shaking, and hard, and aflush with terror and want. He’s not sure if this is what counts as a brain fever, but if it is, well.

He doesn’t think he’ll get any sleep tonight.


End file.
